Today, I spent a few hours and got things ready for the start of the semester. On Friday, I was so busy -- and got interrupted so many times -- that I just couldn't get things finished. There was no-one in the ISB today, so I finished the image for the Molecular Evolution course (they needed a handful of command-line programs installed) and, while that was updating, I got my writing course website mostly set up. I still have to set up the intro labs, but labs don't start until next week, so I still have a few days.
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the "theme" for this semester's writing class. I've generally tried to look for something to drive a data collection exercise. Last semester, we did a "calling frog" survey. Another semester, we mapped the location of garlic mustard plants in Amherst. The problem is that, in the fall, the conditions are not favorable for doing field studies -- and I don't have a laboratory for the course. (In point of fact, next semester, I'm planning to try to schedule my course in the ISB, so I'll have a lab. But this semester, I'm still on the hook...) One year, I had my students study cockroaches: I thought that was perfect. We could find cockroaches in the building and study them. I thought the students would be ecstatic to be studying animals. But, for some reason, the students didn't enjoy studying cockroaches. Go figure.
This semester, I'm thinking I'll have the students construct computer models and study those. It would free us from having to go outside in the snow. And it would make it easy to get lots of cool data. The question is now, what to model. But we've got a whole semester to figure that out.
- Steven D. Brewer's blog
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